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VANCOUVER — Chris Hergesheimer built a bicycle-powered grain mill partly as a farmers market novelty for his fresh flour business and partly to give his arm a rest.

Now the University of B.C. student is betting that his technology can help transform the lives of subsistence farmers in a remote corner of South Sudan, far from the reach of electricity.

Hergesheimer, from Roberts Creek and known as The Flour Peddler, is raising funds and committing the proceeds of all of this season’s fresh flour sales to a trip to Africa where he and his brother Josh plan to direct the assembly of two mills.

“I was doing field work (in southwestern B.C.) for my master’s degree and I came across all these little pockets of local wheat, so I wanted to take it to market,” said Hergesheimer. “I bought a hand-powered mill at first and that gave me the superhero right arm.”

After a season of grinding between six and eight kilograms of flour a day by hand at the Sechelt Farmers Market, Hergesheimer realized he needed a technology that would work faster and that he could operate longer without tiring.

The Flour Peddler Mill was born. The apparatus is relatively simple, consisting mainly of a chain and sprockets connecting the small mill with a bicycle frame equipped with a seat, pedals and handle bars.

The mill produces a kilo of wheat flour in seven to nine minutes while the miller maintains an easy clip on the bike. Contrast that with the one-and-a-half to three hours a day that women in the South Sudanese village of Panlang spend pounding sorghum by hand each day for their family’s use.

“Sorghum is much softer and smaller than wheat, so the women could be very productive with a bicycle-powered mill, maybe a kilo every five minutes,” said Hergesheimer, now a PhD candidate.

The idea to export the Flour Peddler mill to Africa was welcomed by William Kalong Pioth, one of the 20,000 so-called Lost Boys who were displaced by the Sudanese civil war. Pioth came to Canada in 1998 after fleeing Sudan as a refugee and met Chris and Josh through their father Richard, pastor of the First Lutheran Church in south Vancouver.

Pioth moved back to Sudan two years ago to help rebuild his country. To date his projects in the new nation of South Sudan have consisted of basic infrastructure, such as hand-powered water pumps and a medical clinic.

If the women of Panlang only used the Flour Peddler mill to make flour for their families it would free many hours in the day for other work, said Hergesheimer. But the machines could also be the heart of a commercial or cooperative enterprise, milling flour for sale, or even building flour mills to sell to other villages in the region.

The Hergesheimer brothers will not be landing in South Sudan with assembled mills. Rather, they plan to direct the fabrication and assembly of the mills on site by the local people, using locally acquired parts and materials. Delivering a flour mill is one thing, building capacity and skill in a community is another — potentially transformative — thing.

“What they do with the time or the business is up to (the villagers), but we really would like to see a community entrepreneurial enterprise and for them to feel ownership,” Hergesheimer said. “This is not a charity, it’s a business opportunity.”

The estimated cost of the trip, including materials, airfare and other expenses is about $6,500. A crowd-funding page has been set up to collect donations at indiegogo.com, or, you can contact Chris directly at peddleflour@gmail.com.

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